Americans' electric bills rising with the temperatures

AccuWeather

AccuWeather Forecasting Senior Director Dan DePodwin and AccuWeather Climate Expert Brett Anderson discuss the top headlines related to climate change in the June 27 edition of Climate In The News.

Transcript

00:00We're covering a couple of interesting climate stories today.

00:03We'll start by going back in time to the origins of human-induced climate change

00:08and then turn to how a warming environment is impacting your electric bills.

00:14Brett, our first story from CNN.

00:16We have typically thought that humans-inducing climate change are accelerating,

00:21and it started in the early 20th century.

00:23New research, though, showing it at least a couple decades earlier.

00:26Yeah, first observations, weather observations, really started in the mid-1800s.

00:32But what they've noticed here is that the first detectable human signal of climate change

00:38goes all the way back to 1885, Dan.

00:41So what is different here about the research methods used

00:44or the different observations and modeling than other studies?

00:47Yeah, they looked at the stratosphere.

00:49Now, what's the difference between the stratosphere and the troposphere?

00:51The stratosphere is above the troposphere.

00:53But the troposphere warms with climate change because you're trapping all that heat.

00:57But in the stratosphere, while the heat is trapped to the surface, something has to cool.

01:02And so we look for a cooling signal in the stratosphere,

01:05and what they found was they detected a slight cooling signal as far back as 1885.

01:10So several decades earlier than we previously thought.

01:13Also, this shows the importance of monitoring.

01:15Yes, and what we're concerned about is the future NOAA budgets may limit

01:20or even completely eliminate CO2 monitoring in the future.

01:24Yeah, so monitoring is important for us to understand how our climate is changing.

01:28Obviously, in this case, seeing modeled data showing a stratosphere cooling

01:32many decades before we previously thought.

01:35So we'll turn to our second article now from the Wall Street Journal

01:38about our electric bills and how they're headed higher here

01:41as the temperatures climb throughout the summer, looking like an estimated 4% increase

01:45in electric bills on average this year compared to last.

01:48Yeah, all 4%.

01:49It seems like it's a lot higher than that, but yeah, 4% on average.

01:53Biggest increases we're seeing across New England, high usage of gas energy there,

01:59less across the West Coast, but overall the increase, not surprising.

02:03Summers are getting warmer with climate change.

02:05Not every summer is warmer than the previous summer,

02:07but with climate change we're seeing more heat usage of air conditioning, of course,

02:12which adds to the demand.

02:14And then also, with climate change, as we've explained earlier, many more extremes.

02:19And with more extremes, we see more damage to infrastructure.

02:22Also, it seems like there's an increase in brownouts from increased demand.

02:26It seems like you mentioned New England.

02:27There's also less pipeline supply from natural gas to New England.

02:31That's also another example of the increase or a reason for the increased cost there.

02:37Right, exactly.

02:38And again, also another thing to consider, the usage of electric cars.

02:42Many people are using much more energy to charge their cars.

02:46So it seems like the bills are going to keep going up.

02:48We need more supply of natural gas and also the importance of other energy sources

02:54to be able to supply our energy as we head into the future.

02:57Thank you, Brett.

02:58For other information about climate, other stories,

03:00you can find that at accuweather.com slash climate.

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